How To Be More Sustainable In The Kitchen

How To Be More Sustainable
In The Kitchen

Published on: 25 Dec, 2024 By: Meera

Being sustainable in the kitchen means implementing habits, changes, and minor tweaks here and there so that precious resources like water, and food don’t get unnecessarily wasted. Additionally, it means that our kitchen habits and choices don’t cause harm to the environment, like excessive plastic waste and improper garbage disposal.

Bottom line, a sustainable kitchen approach allows us to conserve precious resources, help the environment flourish, and even save money.

If you’re a home cook, baker, or chef, or you find yourself in the kitchen often, here are some ways that you can be more sustainable:

1. Saving Water

Water waste occurs a lot more than you may realise. Here’s how to better manage your water use:

Close the tap when soaping the dishes:

A lot of clean water goes down the drain (literally) and this adds up over time, especially if you wash dishes frequently. Make it a habit to turn the tap off when you’re not using it.

Soak burnt or charred pans or pots:

Soaking helps to soften the burnt pans. It’ll take a much longer time if you attempt to clean without soaking, and you may end up using more water.

Use starchy potato and pasta water to water the plants:

The starchy water contains minerals like magnesium and potassium that are nourishing to plants. People all around the world boil potatoes and pasta, so imagine if 65% of us start repurposing that water to nurture plants, how great for the environment would that be?

2. Reduce Food Waste

It takes a lot of labour to bring food to the table, from hard-working farmers, and the right climate, to the money earned to buy those foods. And, it’s a shame to let them spoil or get thrown away. Here’s how to reduce food waste:

Use leftovers

Instead of ordering in, going out, or making more food, use up what you have in the fridge before they go bad.

Repurpose food

Use leftover rice to make a stir fry, fried rice, or rice bowls. Make jams or smoothies with fruits that are going bad.

Freeze foods

If you don’t have the time to use up certain foods before they go bad, just chuck ’em (respectfully) in the freezer and they’ll keep well for months. Freeze bread, fruits, soups, veggies, and more. But, be sure to use them up eventually.

Proper pantry storage

Foods like flour, flaxseeds, and legumes can bear weevils if it’s too warm in your pantry. Avoid storing them in dark corners or til at the back where it will get even warmer. You can consider storing them in the fridge if you know you won’t use them up in the next few weeks or months. Dried goods like potatoes, onions, and garlic should be stored in the pantry and not in the fridge.

Be mindful about buying what you don’t need or won’t use

Don’t buy foods that will sit in your fridge or pantry for months until expiration. Notice your patterns: Do you have a lot in your foodstuff kitchen that you bought but never used up, or do you have impulsive buying tendencies? Buy what you know you’ll use. If you want to try out something new, buy a small amount of it first to see if it’s something you’d like to use more.

Compost

Carrot and potato skins, veggie stacks, sweet pepper seeds, apple cores, and rotted tomatoes still have benefits to the environment. Composting your scraps gives them a new and meaningful purpose – they nourish the soil which can nourish plants.

3. Reduce Packaging Waste

Shop with reusable bags

Although plastic bags are convenient, they cause too much damage: wildlife that mistake the bags for food are harmed through suffocation, malnutrition, injury, and death. Moreover, plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose in landfills and leech harmful chemicals into the soil and waterways during this time. Plus, plastic is made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource. Replace your shopping bags with cloth, canvas, or netted ones. Keep a few in your car or bag for unexpected shopping trips or in case you forget them.

Buy in bulk

One large container of oats can replace 10 individual packets, thus reducing plastic production, waste, and transportation impact as purchase frequency reduces, too. Buy legumes, nuts, mayo, peanut butter, grains, and more in bulk.

Buy locally

Supermarkets tend to have bananas, nectarines, avocados, lettuce, and tomatoes wrapped or packaged in plastic. To avoid these purchases, shop locally. You’re likely to buy them fresh and without much packaging. Even better, local produce comes from farmers within your own community so transportation impact will be much less compared to supermarket purchases.

Buy dried legumes to reduce canned waste

Not only is this route much less expensive, but it also sends out less waste into the environment – 1 pint of dried legumes can replace 4 canned purchases. Bonus: Canned legumes tend to taste creamier and better.

Install a water filter to reduce bottled water purchases

Let’s say you buy a case of 12 bottled water a week, that’s 648 bottles a year. Consider how many folks do this as well and the numbers will be staggering! Replace all of those bottles with a water filter for clean and safe drinking water. And, use a reusable bottle for on-the-go drinking.

Buy herbs once and keep them growing in your kitchen

Repeated purchases of herbs in plastic containers are unnecessary. You can purchase them once, keep the stacks in water by the kitchen window (for sunlight), and snip the tops for use. They’ll keep growing to give you an endless supply. Great, right?

Replace disposable items with reusable ones

Disposable plates, cups, straws, one-time-use aluminium baking pans, sheets, and cupcake trays, can be replaced with ones that will last you years. This will save you a lot of money as you won’t have to keep replacing disposable items.